Kelly McParland: Public transit stinks, StatsCan confirms

Statistics Canada surprised no one when it revealed that Canadians spend a lot of time commuting to work, and a lot of them find it annoying.

It’s a big country. It takes time to get from place to place. The more people jam into the bigger cities, the more time it’s going to take. And the longer the commute takes, the less people like it.

But ponder the results for a moment and some interesting implications arise.One: As slow as it may be to commute by car, public transit is worse. Two: As much as they beef about their car commute, people prefer it to any alternative.
Three: Year after year of politicians and environmentalists preaching the benefits of public transit have had little impact, perhaps because it’s all talk. People won’t take the bus out of moral obligation; it has to be worth their while.Four: Changing the situation would require heavy investment at all levels of government, because there’s no way cities can afford it all on their own.
Five: There is no compelling evidence Canadians want them to make that investment.

Some of this may come as a surprise to drivers who have been lectured endlessly on the terrible crime they represent to society. They waste resources, they pollute the air, they eat up land for roads and highways, they crowd the cities, they diminish the quality of life. They’re just awful people, when you think of it. Toronto, recognized by StatsCan as having the longest commute in the country, has spent much of the past decade in a war over the automobile. The former mayor, David Miller, denied he hated cars, but waged a determined battle to get people out of their vehicles and into buses or subways. He wheedled billions of dollars out of the federal and provincial governments, oversaw a grand plan known as Transit City, shut down commuter lanes in favour of bicycles, tore up busy streets to update the streetcars and generally never shut up about how important it was to fix the transit system.

Result, after eight years: it’s still faster to take the car, and few people on transit enjoy the experience.

Maybe it would have improved if Mr. Miller’s schemes had all been allowed to reach fruition, but they won’t. The new mayor, Rob Ford, tore up much of the plan and is currently begging for money from the province to build the subways he promised in its place. He’s not having a lot of luck, and is taking much flak as a result. But a big reason Mr. Ford was elected had to do with lack of faith in Mr. Miller’s plan. A lot of people just didn’t think it would work. It was heavy with buses and streetcars, in a city where buses and streetcars have a habit of being slow and unreliable. The city’s track record was awful: hundreds of millions poured into other transit projects disrupted life for months on end without any noticeable improvement.

Which leads us to this question: When are politicians going to get over the ideological allure of transit and address the realities? Studies show it doesn’t really conserve resources, because all those big, fuel-burning buses frequently have just a few people on board. And transit is s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-w, and often uncomfortable.

“What jumps out from this study is the terrible public transit time,” Preston Schiller, a regional and urban planning professor at Queen’s University, told the Toronto Star. “And that 85 per cent of car drivers have never considered public transit. … Why would anyone take transit if it takes double the amount of time than driving?”

Good question. Answer: They won’t. And all the moral fervor of all the politicians and environmentalists from here to Copenhagen won’t change that.